The Numinosum Blog

This post is the second in a series profiling some of the inspirations and thoughts behind the movements of my composition Changing Same premiering March 16th, 2013 at the Ecstatic Music Festival in New York City.

2. “Behold the Only Thing Greater than Yourself”

I remember sitting down as a family to watch the mini-series Roots and ours were one of many familiesthat did the same. Roots became a talked about topic in my neighborhood and in the backyard football and baseball field. Not that I was particularly interested in slavery but even the young elementary school kid I was recognized that Roots was an amazing achievement at that time: an entire high-profile TV series based on black characters that not only black people were interested in watching. It taught a very early lesson to me that stories involving black people and lives were also worth watching and telling.

The title for the second movement of Changing Same comes from the scene in Roots when the family patriarch lifts his newborn child to the star-filled night sky and proclaims “Behold, the only thing greater than yourself.” Those words are a powerfully plangent call valuing one’s intrinsic self-worth and potential in spite of societal resistance often working in opposition to maintaining a positive self-evaluation. Throughout America’s history, blacks confronted this resistance, as James Baldwin wrote, by “groaning and moaning, watching, calculating, clowning, surviving, and outwitting” with “some tremendous strength…nevertheless being forged, which is part of [black] legacy today.”1 And today it is often single mothers left to hold on to that legacy, presenting their children before the world with the gift of love, resiliency, resolve, and strength.

This movement is dedicated to my mom, who struggled as a single parent to raise me and my siblings with that gift of love and strength, resolve, and resiliency so that we are able to not only survive but live and thrive; to have skills and fortitude to take advantage of any opportunity, adding a small contribution to that legacy.

photo Angela Davis at St. Cloud University From public domain, PhotoJournal.com

This post is a first in a series profiling some of the inspirations and thoughts behind the six movements of my composition Changing Same premiering March 16th, 2013 at the Ecstatic Music Festival in New York City.

1. “19”“[W]e must fight for your life as though it were our own—which it is—and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.”1

Being a very young kid growing up in the 1970s I was still forming my thoughts about life. But some images from the media stuck out and left an indelible impression on me about the range and diversity in the black world: movies such as Car Wash and The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings and other blaxploitation films (although I didn't know the term then), TV shows such as Soul Train, Good Times, Sanford and Sons, Fat Albert and The Jeffersons, Dr. J, Mohammed Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, the great multi-ethnic Big Red Machine, the Parliament Funkadelic LPs of my parents, and the black cultural movement featuring powerful political figures such as Shirley Chisholm, Harold Washington, and Angela Davis. Even though I was too young to understand exactly who or what she was or about, the image of a full Afro'd Angela Davis speaking was quite iconic to my young mind.

“19” is partly inspired by a number of seemly disparate musical sources: Arnold Schoenberg's Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke opus 19 from 1911 (one of the first Schoenberg pieces I studied and liked, specifically the Maurizio Pollini DG recording--nineteen is also the age when I began studying music as an undergraduate, after two years working toward a biochem major), Curtis Mayfield’s “Little Child Runnin’ Wild” from his seminal score to the 1972 film Superfly, and a hint of the go-go music of Chuck Brown. The emotional timbre of “19” however, is inspired by the activist Angela Davis and her status in the black culture of my youth. Writer James Baldwin's November 19, 1970 “An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis” is stirring in its description of Davis as a soldier in the on-going struggle for racial and social equality and a martyr in the “enormous revolution in black consciousness…[that] means the beginning or the end of America.”2 The letter, while condemning the false arrest of Angela Davis that summer, goes on to describe the contemporary state of racial dynamics in the United States in biting and incisive commentary.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2013"R&B is about emotion, issues purely out of emotion. New Black Music is also about emotion, but from a different place, and finally, towards a different end. What these musicians feel is a more complete existence. That is, the digging of everything."-LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), “The Changing Same” (1966)

Changing Same, my composition premiering on the Ecstatic Music Festival on March 16, 2013, is a philosophical and musical departure for me: it is a conscious acknowledgement of my early heritage in black popular music and culture. Previously my work was little interested in specifically or overtly reflecting this background in my musical language; my philosophy was (and still is) representative of a ‘post-black’ artistic freedom to explore any creative interest, unburdened with the obligation of only representing or being influenced by ‘the race.’ I am a composer, not just a ‘black’ composer. My journey ‘home’ began a few years ago when I was taken aback by something writer John Murph stated in an interview: “…there’s the whole idea of what is deemed more artistically valid… [with] artists incorporating contemporary pop music. I notice a certain disdain when some black…artists channel R&B, funk, and hip-hop, while their white contemporaries get kudos for giving makeovers to the likes of Radiohead, Nick Drake, and Bjork.”1

While my influences growing up (and now) are quite catholic—an inter-cultural fluency wherein James Brown and Yes, Eddie Van Halen and John Coltrane, go-go music and minimalism provide equal inspiration—I wondered if John Murph’s statement was really true and if so, why was it true? Regardless of the validity of the charge, this question provoked a challenge in me. Fueling a desire, like Duke Ellington in the 1940s with Black, Brown, and Beige or Wadada Leo Smith recently with Ten Freedom Summers, to create music that speaks to the “dichotomies of high and low, inside and outside, tradition and innovation”2 within black culture and explores the richness and complexity of being black in 21st century America; but also music that resonates a more universal artistic expression filtered through the changing sameness of an intimately autobiographical perspective.

So-called indie classical/alt-classical is a reflection of alternative rock and other vernacular music as a palimpsest for the creation of new contemporary music of an expansive and open definition and vision. I wanted to express similar aesthetic ideas however using black vernacular music as the main source, testing John Murph’s assertion. From these musings the gestation of Changing Same began. Musically almost every movement is influenced by a fragment, motive, or chord progression from various black popular music influences I grew up with. I, however, wanted to recognize other sources of inspiration as well—a “digging of everything”—so almost all the movements are connected to various influential classical music and/or personal and cultural memories during my lifetime. This miscegenation is done not in a post-modern sense of ironic collage, but rather as a genuine search to create an organic fusion of artistic and cultural influences, to create a new personal artistic statement that is more than the sum of its parts. This is mixed music.

Check back because in later posts I will be discussing the inspirations behind each movement for Changing Same and for the music nerds out there with a few movements I'll provide some detailed analysis. Hope you to see you in March.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2013Hey do you have your tickets to the 3-2-1 Band concert/sing-along with Grammy award-winning children's music doyen Dan Zanes? Oh, what it's sold out. Well, there may be a few tickets at the door, so come early!

Two years ago we performed a rockingly smokin' special concert with the former member of the 1980's rock group The Del Fuegos, who, if you have kids, is well-known now as one of the preeminent forces in children's music. All proceeds from the concert benefit arts and enrichment programs at PS 321 and having Dan help us out is quite wonderful and thankful. Of course our talented 3-2-1 Band is no slouch and features beloved teachers Bill Fulbrecht, Elizabeth Heisner, Adam Lane, Frank McGarry and of course me (yes, I write and conduct Numinous but this is one of the rare times I actually perform myself).

If you are interested hopefully there will be a few tickets at the door, otherwise you'll have to wait until next time...

Numinous will perform at the Ecstatic Music Festival in NYC. In its third year, this two month festival is one of the premier forums for new music in New York, featuring artists who organically blend different genres and different influences; the Festival "bring[s] artists together for unexpected and often surprising collaborations exploring the fertile terrain between classical and popular music." Numinous is honored to not only be apart of the Festival with all of the other dynamic and outstanding artists, but also with the opportunity to collaborate with an incredible singer and musician, Imani Uzuri.

At Ecstatic we will premiere my new composition,Changing Same, which will premiere on the first half of the Festival performance (and will be recorded soon after). This piece is "bringing it all back home" so to speak: a six­-movement composition where some of the early (pre-rock) popular musical influences I had growing up--­­Prince, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, Chuck Brown, Barry White, and Gamble and Huff­­--directly and subtly inform my contemporary classical musical language to create a compelling, intimate, and affirming musical "memory book." The second half of the concert will feature a composition by Imani, as well as a collaborative composition between myself and Imani. It's going to something special so if you're in NYC in March, get your tickets now!

Check back, in the coming weeks as I publish some details and inspirations behind each movement of Changing Same as well as the other music on the Festival.

Tickets available for our concert here or get a Festival pass or build your own ticket package and check out some of the other great concerts on Ecstatic (beyond our concert I'll be at a number of the other Ecstatic Music Festival gigs too so maybe I'll see you there as well)!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2012While luckily we've made it through Hurricane Sandy fine, New Amsterdam Records didn't. NewAm, for whom some of you know I'll be going into the studio to record a new Numinous album in 2013, is one of the bright lights of new music in NYC and features a number of friends as well as professional colleagues I respect immensely, so if you can help, even a little, it would be most appreciated. Go to New Amsterdam Presents to read about the damage and how you can help by making a donation.

"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall."-Thomas Paine, introduction to The Age of Reason (1794)

As noted in an earlier post or reading here or here, our performances at BAM's Next Wave Festival last week were a resounding success; great, enthusiastic and sold-out crowds all three nights, beautiful and dynamic performances by the musicians, and incredible appreciation of our performances from BAM. One organization that was not happy with our performances however was the Local 802 Musician's union. If you came to the performance you might have been greeted by the below fliers that their members were handing out or might even have spotted the 'rat.' I've really thought over the past few days about whether I should actually respond to the union's false and misleading accusations leveled at me and Numinous or just let the incredibly supportive reaction from audiences, BAM, and musicians speak for themselves. In the end, while I have strong opinions about everything that went on especially the tactics employed by the Union such as the disingenuous fliers and the negative posting on my own Facebook page and BAM's Facebook Event listing, I've decided that I will respond, not with my opinions of the situation, but rather with facts and reason and you can decide for yourselves if "Numinous Music Unfair to Musicians."

Claim: "The Loves of Pharaoh is being played by musicians who are not under contract..."

Fact: Despite the rhetoric of the two union representatives confronting me at a rehearsal a week before the shows that our performances "had" to be under contract, I had no legal obligation to be on a union contract. The agreement between BAM and Numinous paid the musicians a fair wage for performances and rehearsals and was actually based on union rates. No actual Numinous musician complained nor had any issue with the arrangement. Ironic since I was actually happy that because of BAM and the Festival I was able to pay decent wages to everyone. The contract the union initially wanted me to sign a week before the shows was for several thousand dollars more than what BAM and I agreed was already a fair wage for performances and rehearsals (again, based on union rates). This extra money was supposed to come from me, just days before the performances or the union was going to "stop the show."

Claim: "...[musicians] who are not receiving pay and benefits that are the standards upheld by Local 802 AFM to ensure fair living for musicians in New York."

Fact: The pay issue I addressed above: the pay was based on union rates. And although I had no obligation, I did offer to find a way to pay into those Numinous member's pension/health care funds (despite that this would have had to come out of my own pocket since the agreement with BAM had a fixed budget), however I was told by the union that that was not possible without a union contract; and said union contract would bind me and Numinous to union rules and regulations in the future, limiting my performance possibilities with Numinous, which I was not going to do and will not do.

Claim: "Do not patronize The Loves of Pharaoh."

Fact: After being repeatedly threaten by the union the week leading up to the show that they were going to stop the performances if I did not sign the contract, after speaking to several legal consul on this, the only leverage the union really had was to pressure the six union members not to perform with Numinous or they would be brought up on charges of violating the union by-laws and possibly thrown out the union (although almost ALL union members regularly participate in non-union performances and ensembles throughout the city with little to no reprisals), which they did, resulting in me losing four members of Numinous Thursday evening, the day of the premiere (fortunately I was able to find one non-union replacement just before the performance started and three more for Friday and Saturday's performances; two people quit the union the night of the premiere and performed the shows); those union members who did not perform, who put in countless hours of preparation for the shows, sadly lost out on a good paying performance.

Claim: "This is not a labor dispute with BAM."

Fact: I can not speak to any previous issues the union may have had with BAM, but I do know that in the 12 years I've had Numinous, we've been ignored by the union until the week before these high-profile performances.

Those that know me personally or who have performed with me know that I'm the last person that would be "unfair to musicians" and while I was sadden by the added stress that this situation burdened myself and the other musicians with as we were preparing for the performances, it did not dampen or wilt our excitement and our resolve. The commission from and invitation to play at BAM and the Next Wave Festival is a wonderful honor and opportunity, one that represents the next higher level of profile for myself and Numinous and one that any musician, composer, or group would gladly accept. I was not going to let the union or anyone else deny us this chance, nor dim our future. And the fact that the shows were incredibly successful artistically and everyone was pleased, brought a tremendous amount of satisfaction to all of us involved.

These will be my final and only public words on this subject, since I'm interested in moving on and continuing to work hard to create wonderful (and well-paid) performance opportunities for Numinous. Thank you for reading my position on this and I will leave you with a few words from musicians and audience members to speak for themselves:

The only course [the union] found was to slander and seek division, rather than build solidarity, and...whose only resort was to yell out from balconies and attempt to soil the reputation of a non-union band. If they had any hope of gaining membership or solidarity from any of the folks performing then they clearly wasted the valuable opportunity by handing out those fliers with that kind of language.

...great experience, totally honored to have been there!

I have collaborated with Joe Phillips since 2008. I think Joe Phillips is an incredible composer, leader and hard working individual. I have never felt abused or exploited when working with him. I fully support him and his work and am happy to be part of Numinous Ensemble.

[The union's] actions only succeeded in alienating musicians from the Local 802; their attempts at solidarity without knowing the facts did nothing but create hostility between the ensemble and Local 802. Furthermore, Numinous is an ensemble with a long history, not just some "pick-up" gig - and to barge in (at the last minute) and challenge that - "break up the family", if you will - did more harm than good. I was considering joining Local 802 as I am very pro-union in general, but after this experience I will stay as far away from it as I possibly can.

Thank you so much for offering us all this incredible opportunity to play your beautiful music and in such a rare and exciting context. I am honored by your invitation and inspired by your perseverance in the face of all the stressful and unexpected last minute changes.

I attended last Friday’s performance and was surprised to find a union rep handing out fliers at the door...As a long time union member as well as a professional colleague and friend of Joe Phillips I was surprised and offended by the action taken by the union...Most of his ensemble has been playing with him for years and his loyalty to his players is well known among musicians. The fact that his ensemble was poised to make an auspicious New York debut of an important original concert piece of Joe’s makes this all the more disturbing and sad.

UPDATE: Because of all of the fall-out from supporters, now NOT unfair. Not that there was any doubt nor was I told this from the organization nor is it found anywhere online (some friends asked about it and was told, and let me know), but hey...

We reached our Kickstarter goal last week for our project To Begin the World Over Again! Thank you to all that helped us and we look forward to seeing you sometime in these next two weeks for the performances and community events.

Rehearsals have been going wonderfully and after hearing and seeing everything together, I can say (even if I wasn't biased) that it's going to be beautiful.

To Begin the World Over AgainSeptember 27, 28, 29October 4, 5, 6Irondale Center85 South Oxford StreetBrooklyn, NY8:00 PMTickets here$20 General Admission/$15 Students and Seniors

There are some wonderful events associated with my Thomas Paine project To Begin the World Over Again with Edisa Weeks and Delirious Dances. We have a number of free events that tie in with the some of the themes that Thomas Paine spoke of and which are relevant today. We hope you'll check out the performances and some of these events as well.

Free Community EventsThe community events are organized by Purpose Lounge and designed to give people an opportunity to actively engage with the ideals of liberty, democracy and equality that Thomas Paine believed were America’s promise and gift to the world – ideals that greatly influenced American identity, history and mythology.

Why “United States” Tuesday October 2 from 6pm – 9pm A discussion about the structural benefits and negatives of the United States social / political system.

Point No Point Wednesday October 3 from 6pm – 9pm A discussion about how the American political system is analyzed and contextualized through the lens of American media.

The Promise of Promise Saturday October 6, 2012 from noon – 6pm A day-long exploration into Thomas Paine's vision and concerns during the forming of the United States of America - featuring a documentary film, food, poetry throw-down and a discussion with Harvey Kaye – award winning Scholar, Historian, and author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America.

Here's the official trailer from BAM for our Next Wave Festival performance in October. Tickets are available here. In a few weeks I'll post video and discuss a completed scene featuring a full version of the music you hear in the trailer, so check back!

Should an independancy [sic] be brought...we have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest purest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again.-Thomas Paine, Common Sense, Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, 1776

On this day we celebrate America, we should also be thinking about and appreciating the 'Forgotten Founding Father' Thomas Paine. To read some of Paine's writings such as Common Sense, The American Crisis, or The Rights of Man is to realize how much he has meant to the formation of the ideals of America and how those ideas are still resonant today, even if America hasn't always lived up to those ideals (or acknowledged Paine's full role in them). Beyond Paine's words themselves, check out Harvey Kaye's wonderful book, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America, which in many ways helped to stoke the fires that became To Begin the World Over Again.

To Begin the World Over AgainDance Performance, Panel Discussions, Art Exhibition, Teach-in's

The schedule for the 2012 BAMNext Wave Festival was just announced yesterday and this year the Festival will include Numinous! I have been commissioned by the Next Wave Festival to compose an original score to the newly restored silent film, The Loves of Pharaoh by director Ernst Lubitsch. Numinous will perform the score live with the film at the new Steinberg Screen at BAM's Harvey Theater. We are deeply honored to be apart of the one of the preeminent festivals in the country, especially in this its 30th year. This has been in the works for a while now so I'm happy to (finally!) share the news.

There will be an Artist Talk on Friday October 19 after the showing, featuring myself and Thomas Bakels of Alpha-Omega Digital GmbH, who did a wonderful job with the restoration (they also did the digital work on the 2001 and 2010 restorations of Fritz Lang's Metropolis).

Released in 1922, this film was Lubitsch's last silent film in Germany before coming to Hollywood; in fact, this film was a calling card to Hollywood to show he could direct spectacle and "a cast of thousands" as well as D.W. Griffith in his infamous influential The Birth of a Nation (1915). Like that film, as well as later epic films such as Fred Niblo's Ben-Hur (1925) or Cecille B. Demille's The Ten Commandments (1923), The Loves of Pharaoh is grand in scope and ambition and shows a master director's skill even though it was a few years away from the famous musicals and comedies that cemented him and his "Lubitsch touch" in the pantheon of great Hollywood "Golden Age" directors from the 1930s and 1940s.

(photo credits: top photo, scene from The Loves of Pharaoh from Alpha-Omega; bottom photo, German poster from IMDb)

While Black Mamba was the most celebrated and lethal member of DeVAS (Deadly Viper Assassination Squad), there was actually one "forgotten" member who was more funky and kickasstastic: Red Mamba. Sometimes know as Ana Milosavljevic, Red Mamba debuts May 18th, 2012 at the Tribeca New Music Festival during an event entitled, The Red Viper Project. While usually operating under stealth conditions, some clandestine video footage of Red Mamba in action has been uncovered. Be warned, after viewing you might feel the urge to seek out Red Mamba on May 18th at The Cell Theater 338 West 23rd Street (btw. 8th & 9th Ave.) 8 pm to witness her kickasstery for yourself.